Reverses the encoding of a Path performed by encode_path. This function
should always be used to reverse the encoding, as it will correctly detect
whether the string 'S' is an actual path or one that was Base-64 encoded.
The function will only return an error if the Path was the Base-64 encoded
form and the encoding has been tampered with.
Converts the Path P to a UTF-8 string which can be safely written to a file
irrespective of whether the original Path contains unprintable characters
or is an invalid UTF-8 string. If the Path is a valid UTF-8 string and
contains no control characters such as \t it is returned as-is, otherwise
it is encoded as a Base-64 string and given a special prefix which means
the resultant string can be unambiguously detected as an encoded path rather
than an actual path. This conversion can be reversed using the decode_path
function.